Free convection performance of circular cavities having two active curved vertical sides and two inactive curved horizontal sides

A detailed review of the archival reveals that the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics of circular cavities have not been investigated so far and of course their physical features are not understood. A prominent application of these cavities arises in the miniaturized packaging of electronic components that are subject to strict constraints. This paper addresses primarily steady-state laminar natural convection of air in a circular cavity of diameter H inscribed in a square cavity of side H where the corresponding sides are in contact at four points. A third cavity, an arc–square cavity whose shape lies between the square and circular cavity shapes is included in the analysis. The finite volume method is used to perform the numerical simulations. The methodology takes into account the second-order-accurate QUICK scheme for the discretization of the convective term, whereas the pressure–velocity coupling is handled with the SIMPLE scheme. Since the air is not assumed a Boussinesq gas, it was decided to take all thermophysical properties as temperature-dependent. In the end, it has been demonstrated that the circular cavity possesses a superior balance between heat transfer enhancement and size in cross-section area in comparison with the standard square cavity. The side of the square cavity is similar to the diameter of the circular cavity.